The U.S. military is delaying the departure of thousands of soldiers from Iraq while speeding the arrival of thousands more

Reuters
Pentagon moves to buttress U.S. troop levels in Iraq
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military is delaying the departure of thousands of soldiers from Iraq while speeding the arrival of thousands more as a way to keep more troops on the ground to handle unrelenting violence, the Pentagon said on Monday.

In a bid to stem a rise in sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims that has heightened concern over civil war, the United States has increased the number of troops in Iraq the past two months to 142,000.

A brigade of roughly 3,800 soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division, based in Germany, that was to have left Iraq in January is being held in place for an extra 6-1/2 weeks and will leave in late February, the Pentagon said.

These soldiers are now set to serve roughly 13 months in Iraq, longer than the policy of 12-month tours of duty for Army soldiers. They are in the area of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province in western Iraq, the heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency.

Meanwhile, a similarly sized Texas-based Army brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division will go to Iraq a month earlier than previously scheduled, beginning its deployment in late October, the Pentagon said.

Both moves enable the Pentagon to bolster troop levels in Iraq without actually deploying soldiers not already due to go. But the timing reflects what some military experts have called the growing strain on the Army in continuing to provide large numbers of combat troops for Iraq and Afghanistan.

A Pentagon statement said the moves "are necessary to maintain the current force structure in Iraq into the spring of next year."

It is the second time in two months that the military has extended a brigade beyond its planned departure date to deal with unabated violence in Iraq 3 1/2 years into the war.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said last week the United States is likely to keep more than 140,000 troops in Iraq through at least next spring. President George W. Bush has acknowledged he had hoped to begin reducing troop levels by now but was thwarted by the persistent violence.

'A GREAT DEAL'

"There's no question but that any time there's a war, the forces of the countries involved are asked to do a great deal," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters.

"From time to time, there may be units that will be asked to increase the number of days in-country from what had been anticipated. On the other hand, we're also bringing you some other units in earlier, which is another way of dealing with that issue."

By extending a unit scheduled to leave Iraq, the Army can maintain or bolster troop levels without having to send reinforcements from outside the country. Bu such action often provokes anger and disappointment among soldiers and families.

Some military experts have said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the Army nearly to breaking point, with many soldiers serving two or three tours of duty and equipment wearing out at alarming rates.

Pentagon policy is for Army soldiers to serve 12-month tours in Iraq and Marines seven months. Troops who serve longer get extra pay.

The Pentagon said delaying the departure of the 1st Armored Division brigade will give another unit due to go to Iraq in January -- a brigade of the Georgia-based 3rd Infantry Division -- a full year of rest since it last saw combat.

At key times in the war such as Iraqi elections in 2005 and the return of sovereignty in 2004, the Pentagon has delayed troop departures to beef up the U.S. presence.

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Iraq war fuels Islamic radicals: retired U.S. general

Reuters
Iraq war fuels Islamic radicals: retired U.S. general
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The conduct of the Iraq war fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe and created more enemies for the United States, a retired U.S. Army general who served in the conflict said on Monday.

The views of retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste buttressed an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies, which intelligence officials said concluded the war had inspired Islamist extremists and made the militant movement more dangerous.

The Iraq conflict, which began in March 2003, made "America arguably less safe now than it was on September 11, 2001," Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, told a hearing on the war called by U.S. Senate Democrats.

"If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents," Batiste said.

U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte refuted that charge at a Washington dinner late Monday, denying the Iraq war had increased the terrorism threat to the United States.

"I think we could safely say that we are safer and that the threat to the homeland itself has, if anything, been reduced since 9/11," the U.S. director of national intelligence said in response to intelligence leaks on Iraq and terrorism that have engulfed the Bush administration in recent days.

"We are more vigilant. We are better prepared," he said.

Batiste, who was among retired generals who called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld earlier this year, poured scorn on the war plan along with two other retired military men at a hearing called by Senate Democrats.

HARSH TREATMENT MAKES ENEMIES

They said the Pentagon let the insurgency grow by not sending enough U.S. troops and made enemies by abusing Iraqis.

"Probably 99 percent of those people were guilty of absolutely nothing," Batiste said of Iraqis U.S. forces held at Abu Ghraib prison. "But the way we treated them, the way we abused them, turned them against the effort in Iraq forever."

At one point, retired Marine Corps Col. Thomas Hammes derisively referred to the U.S. Iraq strategy as "Whack-a-mole," a fairground game where the player uses a big hammer to swat mechanical moles as they pop up from holes.

Hammes said the United States needed another 10 years to succeed in Iraq, while retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said the Army needed another 60,000 troops to finish the job. There are 142,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Hammes helped establish bases for Iraqi armed forces in 2004, while Eaton trained Iraqi military and police in 2003-4.

Most Democrats are pushing for a plan to start withdrawing U.S. forces, but without a deadline to finish the withdrawal.

Democrats have seized upon the National Intelligence Estimate to undermine the image fostered by President George W. Bush and Republicans as the party best able to stop terrorism before November elections in which control of Congress is at stake.

The classified intelligence document said Iraq had become the main recruiting tool for the Islamic militant movement as well as a training ground for guerrillas, according to current and former intelligence officials.

Negroponte told his audience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars that news accounts exaggerated the NIE's emphasis on Iraq by overlooking a range of other factors including slow progress in economic, social and political reform throughout the Muslim world.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and Matt Spetalnick)

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Are YOURS the actions of a true American?

crooksandliars.com
Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?
By: Nicole Belle

Keith pulled no punches and launched another smack down on Bush and FOX News…

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.

The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—

Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!

President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.

President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.

Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.

But not this President.

To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.

That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.

But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.

Except… for this:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.

As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.

Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.

Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for "e-mailing" you the question.

Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.

He told the great truth un-told… about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.

He was brave.

Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I — in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist — and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.

The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.

Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11."

Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.

The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.

The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it — who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews — have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.

Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense — why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?

That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."

Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.

Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri — the future Attorney General — echoed Coats.

Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.

And of course, were it true Clinton had been "distracted" by the Lewinsky witch-hunt — who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?

Who corrupted the political media?

Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?

Who preempted them… in order to strangle us with the trivia that was… "All Monica All The Time"?

Who… distracted whom?

This is, of course, where — as is inevitable — Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.

The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.

But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.

The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.

Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.

Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.

We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.

And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.

Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:

You did not try.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.

You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.

Then, you blamed your predecessor.

That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.

To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.

That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel "1984."

The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…

"Power is not a means; it is an end.

"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."

Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.

"We must disenthrall ourselves."

Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence. He might well have.

"We must disenthrall ourselves — and then… we shall save our country."

And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date… to save… our… country.

—

The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

I’m K.O., good night, and good luck.

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In Rove's Footsteps: They learned from the master, and are applying the lessons in the hottest races ahead. Meet the architect's protégés.

In Rove's Footsteps
They learned from the master, and are applying the lessons in the hottest races ahead. Meet the architect's protégés.
By Richard Wolffe
Newsweek

Oct. 2, 2006 issue - In a darkened edit room in downtown Dallas, admaker Scott Howell is tinkering with his latest political firebomb. The ad starts with illegal immigrants running across the border. It then cuts to images of Osama bin Laden and Zacarias Moussaoui. Finally comes the real target of Howell's attack: Harold Ford Jr., the Democrat locked in a close race for the Senate seat in Tennessee. Over an edgy hip-hop soundtrack, the ad castigates Ford for voting against border security and the Patriot Act. "No wonder Harold Ford has been rated the most liberal congressman from Tennessee," the narrator intones. The ad ends with the word "liberal" pulsing on the screen as a shadowy figure walks down a long hallway.

If that ad sounds familiar, it's not surprising—it's a classic in the Karl Rove genre. Howell is one of a group of admakers, strategists and direct-mailers who learned the craft from the architect of George W. Bush's White House—and are now shaping some of the hottest races of 2006. Some are in Texas, making money as consultants; some are in Washington, toiling inside the administration or the party. Most of them will be in contact with Rove as Election Day draws near. None can match their mentor's talent; armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of electoral history, Rove combines a strategic vision for his party with a ruthless will to win. But as his time in the West Wing draws to a close, Rove leaves a legacy well beyond the White House—in the next generation that he's nurtured, and the campaigning style they share.

Todd Olsen is one of Rove's prized pupils. He learned the direct-mail business working at Rove's firm in Austin, Texas, then bought the company—and its invaluable mailing lists—with a partner when Rove switched full time to the Bush campaign in 1999. Today Olsen is refining Rove's microtargeting techniques for candidates across the country. Among them, two of the highest-profile African-Americans running as Republicans: Michael Steele in Maryland and Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania. (A key component of Rove's vision: bringing more African-Americans into the party.) Olsen still uses Rove's old spreadsheets, printing up a giant financial summary on Fridays to analyze how much his mailings have raised from each segment of every list.

Terry Nelson first worked closely with Rove as political director of the Bush '04 campaign. He was struck by Rove's street-level management of the details. "Karl has a great focus on trying to figure out what works in a quantifiable way, not only in terms of message discipline but the discipline of building the organization," says Nelson. "I learned a lot more about spreadsheets under Karl than I ever knew before." Nelson is now senior adviser to Sen. John McCain's political-action committee (widely thought to be the precursor to a 2008 presidential run), managing McCain's extensive campaigning for GOP candidates this fall.

Running the Rove playbook in Washington are Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Sara Taylor, White House political director. Together, they've implemented a strategy that has worked wonders through the last two election cycles. But facing the tides of history and a war-weary electorate, they will need all of Rove's tricks to keep the party in power. Mehlman first started working with Rove in the embryonic Bush campaign in 1999 and later managed Bush's re-election in 2004. "We've learned a lot from each other—from what we've done right and what we've done wrong," he says. "One is that there's no place in America we can't go and unfold our Republican banner. Another is the importance of a strong grass-roots effort—the Amway-like model."

Some of Rove's heirs have become lightning rods, just like their mentor. Scott Howell, who is running ad campaigns in such hot spots as Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia this fall, has drawn Democratic fire for his Rovean tactics. Last week the Webb campaign in Virginia named Howell as one of the "nastiest, most renowned negative campaigners in the business." Howell got his start at the RNC, where he worked with Rove under legendary attack artist Lee Atwater; he later joined Rove's direct-mail business in Austin. (The criticism isn't confined to Democrats. Some GOP operatives say Howell is simply riding Rove's coattails, and question the quality of his work for the Bush campaign in 2004. Howell suggests the sniping is the result of his success.)

But it's not all bare-knuckled offense; Howell leavens his attack ads with soft-focus spots featuring his candidates' families. One ad for Mike Bouchard, running for the Senate in Michigan, features the candidate wedged between his teenage daughter and her date. "Isn't this fun?" the candidate deadpans to the hapless boyfriend.

Rove will be watching his protégés closely, as he struggles to retain the GOP's control of Congress. One of his biggest concerns is that some congressional campaigns aren't recruiting as many volunteers as they did last time around. "You have to constantly replenish people. In some instances it has been done very successfully by some candidates," he told NEWSWEEK. "In other instances, it's not been done so well."

Anybody who has worked for Rove knows what that means—he'll be on their backs from now until November. In the early days in Austin, his employees used to stage mock "mutinies," walking out of his office to drink Margaritas whenever the boss drove them too hard. In one of the most important elections of their careers, Rove's heirs won't be walking out. But after Karl is done with them, they might need a drink.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14974832/site/newsweek/

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Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines

The New York Times
Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines
By IAN URBINA


Chris Gardner/Associated Press

Electronic voting machines in Maryland, where several counties reported problems during the primary.


WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A growing number of state and local officials are getting cold feet about electronic voting technology, and many are making last-minute efforts to limit or reverse the rollout of new machines in the November elections.

Less than two months before voters head to the polls, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland this week became the most recent official to raise concerns publicly. Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said he lacked confidence in the state’s new $106 million electronic voting system and suggested a return to paper ballots.

Dozens of states have adopted electronic voting technology to comply with federal legislation in 2002 intended to phase out old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines after the “hanging chads” confusion of the 2000 presidential election.

But some election officials and voting experts say they fear that the new technology may have only swapped old problems for newer, more complicated ones. Their concerns became more urgent after widespread problems with the new technology were reported this year in primaries in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland and elsewhere.

This year, about one-third of all precincts nationwide are using the electronic voting technology for the first time, raising the chance of problems at the polls as workers struggle to adjust to the new system.

“I think there is good reason for concern headed into the midterm elections,” said Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat and former Ohio governor who was co-chairman of a study of new machines for the National Research Council with Richard L. Thornburgh, a Republican and former governor of Pennsylvania.

“You have to train the poll workers,” Mr. Celeste said, “especially since many of them are of a generation for whom this technology is a particular challenge. You need to have plans in place to relocate voters to another precinct if machines don’t work, and I just don’t know whether these steps have been taken.”

Paperless touch-screen machines have been the biggest source of consternation, and with about 40 percent of registered voters nationally expected to cast their ballots on these machines in the midterm elections, many local officials fear that the lack of a paper trail will leave no way to verify votes in case of fraud or computer failure.

As a result, states are scrambling to make last-minute fixes before the technology has its biggest test in November, when voter turnout will be higher than in the primaries, many races will be close and the threat of litigation will be ever-present.

“We have the real chance of recounts in the coming elections, and if you have differences between the paper trail and the electronic record, which number prevails?” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of the Election Law blog, www.electionlawblog.org.

Professor Hasen found that election challenges filed in court grew to 361 in 2004, up from 197 in 2000. “What you have coming up is the intersection of new technology and an unclear legal regime,” he said.

Like Mr. Ehrlich, other state officials have decided on a late-hour change of course. In January, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico decided to reverse plans to use the touch-screen machines, opting instead to return to paper ballots with optical scanners. Last month, the Connecticut secretary of state, Susan Bysiewicz, decided to do the same.

“I didn’t want my state to continue being an embarrassment like Ohio and Florida every four years,” said Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, adding, “I also thought we needed to restore voter confidence, and that wasn’t going to happen with the touch-screen machines.”

In Pennsylvania, a state senator introduced a bill last week that would require every precinct to provide voters with the option to use paper ballots, which would involve printing extra absentee ballots and having them on site. A similar measure is being considered on the federal level.

In the last year or so, at least 27 states have adopted measures requiring a paper trail, which has often involved replacing paperless touch-screen machines with ones that have a printer attached.

But even the systems backed up by paper have problems. In a study released this month, the nonpartisan Election Science Institute found that about 10 percent of the paper ballots sampled from the May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, were uncountable because printers had jammed and poll workers had loaded the paper in backward.

Lawsuits have been filed in Colorado, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia seeking to prohibit the use of touch-screen machines.

Deborah L. Markowitz, the Vermont secretary of state and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said that while there might be some problems in November, she expected them to be limited and isolated.

“The real story of the recent primary races was how few problems there were, considering how new this technology is,” said Ms. Markowitz, a Democrat. “The failures we did see, like in Maryland, Ohio and Missouri, were small and most often from poll workers not being prepared.”

Many states have installed the machines in the past year because of a federal deadline. If states wanted to take advantage of federal incentives offered by the Help America Vote Act, they had to upgrade their voting machines by 2006.

In the primary last week in Maryland, several counties reported machine-related problems, including computers that misidentified the party affiliations of voters, electronic voter registration lists that froze and voting-machine memory cards whose contents could not be electronically transmitted. In Montgomery County, election workers did not receive access cards to voting machines for the county’s 238 precincts on time, forcing as many as 12,000 voters to use provisional paper ballots until they ran out.

“We had a bad experience in the primary that led to very long lines, which means people get discouraged and leave the polls without voting,” said Governor Ehrlich, who is in a tight re-election race and has been accused by his critics of trying to use the voting issue to motivate his base. “We have hot races coming up in November and turnout will be high, so we can expect lines to be two or three times longer. If even a couple of these machines break down, we could be in serious trouble.”

Problems during primaries elsewhere have been equally severe.

In the Illinois primary in March, Cook County officials delayed the results of the county board elections for a week because of human and mechanical problems at hundreds of sites with new voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems.

In the April primary in Tarrant County, Tex., machines made by Hart InterCivic counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were cast. The problem was attributed to programming errors, not hacking.

In the past year, the Government Accountability Office, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Congressional Research Service have released reports raising concerns about the security of electronic machines.

Advocates of the new technology dispute the conclusions.

“Many of these are exaggerated accusations by a handful of vocal activists,” said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems, one of the largest sellers of touch-screen machines. “But if you want to talk about fraud and tabulation error, the newer technology is far more accurate.”

Mr. Radke cited a study from the California Institute of Technology that found that between the 2000 election, when touch-screen machines were not used, and the 2004 election, when they were, there was a 40 percent reduction in voter error in Maryland, making the vote there the most accurate in the country.

“There is always the potential for human error,” Mr. Radke said, “but that is easily correctible.”

But critics say bugs and hackers could corrupt the machines.

A Princeton University study released this month on one of Diebold’s machines — a model that Diebold says it no longer uses — found that hackers could easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable the machines and change the vote totals.

Mr. Radke dismissed the concerns about hackers and bugs as most often based on unrealistic scenarios.

“We don’t leave these machines sitting on a street corner,” he said. “But in one of these cases, they gave the hackers complete and unfettered access to the machines.”

Warren Stewart, legislative director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting, said that after poll workers are trained to use the machines in the days before an election, many counties send the machines home with the workers. “That seems like pretty unfettered access to me,” Mr. Stewart said.

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British Soldiers in 'guns for coke' scandal

The Sunday Times of London
Soldiers in 'guns for coke' scandal
David Leppard

BRITISH soldiers have been caught smuggling stolen guns out of Iraq and allegedly exchanging them for cocaine and cash on the black market.

Security officials confirmed this weekend that soldiers from the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment are at the centre of a criminal inquiry by the Royal Military Police (RMP) into a “guns for cocaine” network.

Their alleged involvement with organised crime is a fresh blow to the British Army after a week in which a corporal from the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment admitted he had committed a war crime against an Iraqi civilian.

Although drug use is increasing in the armed forces, this is the first time military police have evidence that stolen weapons are being sold to pay for them.

One of the first soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment to have been arrested is alleged to have bought drugs by trading handguns, including Glock pistols, smuggled from Iraq to Germany on at least six occasions.

A security source said some of the weapons had been exchanged for about 50 grams of cocaine with a street value of £2,500. The drugs were sold to other British soldiers serving in Iraq.

The source said it was unclear whether the weapons were army issue or seized from Iraqi insurgent groups.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) fears the soldiers may have been doing business with members of organised crime syndicates in Germany. The battalion has a base near Fallingbostel, north of Hanover.

One security official said: “Who did the guns go to? And what purpose did they want guns for? Did they take them back to the UK and sell them on? Are they in the hands of Yardies?” The case is being overseen by the Army Prosecuting Authority and falls under the jurisdiction of a court martial. The battalion completed a tour of duty in southern Iraq last year and is now based in Warminster, Wiltshire.

As Iraq slides further into chaos, the country has become awash with illicit weapons, many provided to the Iraqi police by America and Britain.

The army is suffering an epidemic of drug abuse. Earlier this year The Sunday Times revealed how the army regiment involved in the first Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal was awash with drugs as the soldiers went to war.

One former fusilier claimed that 75 men from his company, some 60% of its strength, regularly took cocaine, ecstasy or marijuana. “There’s guys who have to have two or three lines of coke before they can operate,” he said.

According to a parliamentary answer, 1,020 army personnel tested positive for drugs last year, including 520 cases using class A drugs — a 50% rise in the past five years.

The MoD confirmed the RMP inquiry but declined to comment further.

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Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat

The New York Times
Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

More than a dozen United States government officials and outside experts were interviewed for this article, and all spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a classified intelligence document. The officials included employees of several government agencies, and both supporters and critics of the Bush administration. All of those interviewed had either seen the final version of the document or participated in the creation of earlier drafts. These officials discussed some of the document’s general conclusions but not details, which remain highly classified.

Officials with knowledge of the intelligence estimate said it avoided specific judgments about the likelihood that terrorists would once again strike on United States soil. The relationship between the Iraq war and terrorism, and the question of whether the United States is safer, have been subjects of persistent debate since the war began in 2003.

National Intelligence Estimates are the most authoritative documents that the intelligence community produces on a specific national security issue, and are approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. Their conclusions are based on analysis of raw intelligence collected by all of the spy agencies.

Analysts began working on the estimate in 2004, but it was not finalized until this year. Part of the reason was that some government officials were unhappy with the structure and focus of earlier versions of the document, according to officials involved in the discussion.

Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.

Frederick Jones, a White House spokesman, said the White House “played no role in drafting or reviewing the judgments expressed in the National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism.” The estimate’s judgments confirm some predictions of a National Intelligence Council report completed in January 2003, two months before the Iraq invasion. That report stated that the approaching war had the potential to increase support for political Islam worldwide and could increase support for some terrorist objectives.

Documents released by the White House timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the successes that the United States had made in dismantling the top tier of Al Qaeda.

“Since the Sept. 11 attacks, America and its allies are safer, but we are not yet safe,” concludes one, a report titled “9/11 Five Years Later: Success and Challenges.” “We have done much to degrade Al Qaeda and its affiliates and to undercut the perceived legitimacy of terrorism.”

That document makes only passing mention of the impact the Iraq war has had on the global jihad movement. “The ongoing fight for freedom in Iraq has been twisted by terrorist propaganda as a rallying cry,” it states.

The report mentions the possibility that Islamic militants who fought in Iraq could return to their home countries, “exacerbating domestic conflicts or fomenting radical ideologies.”

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”

The new National Intelligence Estimate was overseen by David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, who commissioned it in 2004 after he took up his post at the National Intelligence Council. Mr. Low declined to be interviewed for this article.

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

In recent months, some senior American intelligence officials have offered glimpses into the estimate’s conclusions in public speeches.

“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.

Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.

The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.

The panel investigating the London terrorist bombings of July 2005 reported in May that the leaders of Britain’s domestic and international intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, “emphasized to the committee the growing scale of the Islamist terrorist threat.”

More recently, the Council on Global Terrorism, an independent research group of respected terrorism experts, assigned a grade of “D+” to United States efforts over the past five years to combat Islamic extremism. The council concluded that “there is every sign that radicalization in the Muslim world is spreading rather than shrinking.”

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His own NIE says Bush is the Terrorists' Best Friend. When will the Democrats?

Huffington Post
Trey Ellis
His own NIE says Bush is the Terrorists' Best Friend. When will the Democrats?

So let me get this straight, the C.I.A, the N.S.A. Negroponte, every single intelligence branch we've got, all got together, produced a National Intelligence Estimate and decided that the way that the Bush administration has prosecuted the war on terrorism has actually made it quantitatively worse. And remember that all of these intelligence branches, for the past six years, have been aggressively purged by the Bushies of Democrats and other pesky non-believers.

And yet the Democrat leadership still has not stood up with one voice and denounced this administration's lunacy.

Democrats still poll lower than Republicans in their ability to battle terrorism because the Democratic response, by and large, has been silence.

Instead of running away from the issues of terrorism and torture the Dems need to wake up and press a coherent response to terrorism across every news cycle from now till November.

Repeat after me:

"The Bush Administration's incompetence is making us less safe, not more. They have inspired thousands more jihadists than they have captured or killed. If you don't believe us believe their own experts. We Democrats have a plan to save our nation from this dangerous bungling. Vote for us and we will quickly turn this ship of state away from the iceberg."

This needs to be shouted at a press conference, yet not only Reid and Pelosi, but Kerry, Biden and Murtha need to be at the mic as well. Dems need to show the world that they speak with one strong voice on the most important issue of the day. They need to start listening to people like Michael Scheurer, former CIA senior analyst, formerly anonymous author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," and former chief of the Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden unit.

Here's what Scheurer said on the Washington Post online back in 2004. It's still just as true today: "First, I think it's essential that our leaders begin to square with the American people. We are under attack by Islamic militants for what we do in the world -- not for who we are or what we believe in. Quite simply, American policies in the Islamic world are Osama bin Laden's only indispensable ally."


That is a radically different message from what the incompetent Bush administration spouts. Bush is convinced that the terrorists are simply irate at our "freedom," our keg parties, our Girls Gone Wild infomercials. Dems need to shout that that juvenile response is not only wrongheaded but it endangers the lives of each and every Westerner on the globe.

Here are some other suggestions for solutions that I posted last week:

"We will never ever conquer terrorism until we address the legitimate grievances of the vast majority of non-violent Muslims. An intelligent plan to make us safer cannot only consist of aggressive law enforcement. Democrats need to espouse a longer-term strategy for creating conditions that would rob the current jihadi nutjobs of new recruits. First on the list:

The Palestinians

We need to engage fully and fairly in the Middle East peace process for the sake of Israel's future security and for our own. Nothing we do in anywhere else will ever matter as much.

Iraq

We need to restore Iraqi sovereignty by strategically redeploying as soon as possible. As long as we're in there our soldiers over there and our civilians here are at added risk. And if any jerk ever says "cut and run" just punch him in the nose.

Afghanistan

We need to be seen throwing money around everywhere, prying the country from grip of the drug lords and the Taliban.

Aid.

Lots of it. All over the developing world we need to spread money. Every time a Yemeni drinks from a cup full of clean drinking water that cup needs to read, "A gift from the U.S.A." Our aid to northern Pakistan after their devastating earthquake created tremendous good will for us and cost a lot less than Rummy's smart bombs."

If Democrats could roll out a simple, three-or-four-point plan to start making Americans actually safer instead of ever more at risk then they would engender the kind of excitement in them that will propel them to regime change in the midterms.

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John McCain, the Straight Torture Express, And the Moral Price of Ambition

Huffington Post
Brent Budowsky
John McCain, the Straight Torture Express, And the Moral Price of Ambition

The misnomered "compromise" on torture, which is a 90% ratification of the Bush and Cheney torture policy, and a 100% abdication of the responsiblity of Congress, is barely worth an itemized breakdown of deficiencies.

It is not a compromise. It is a ratification. Let us hope that the coming week brings an outcry from military and retired military leaders who
are appalled by this.

John McCain's outrage, or John McCain's moral tragedy, is Shakespearean in magnitude.

"Who doth ambition shun..."

In 2000, the partisans pushing Bush slandered even McCain's military heroism, slandered even McCain's wife, slandered the essence of what McCain stood for.

Who doth ambition shun. By 2004 McCain was maneuvering for the support of those who slandered him. Shamefully, he issued only the tamest comments when John Kerry's heroism was similarly slandered.

In 2000, MCain stood for religious and political tolerance, speaking out against the politics of intolerance, while young men and women stood in the audience gazing at McCain with genuine admiration.

Who doth ambition shun.

By 2008, those young men and women will be gone from those audiences, the halo of genuine admiration having disappeared, replaced by the hacks of "win at all costs" Republicanism and the ideologues of the far right, who's favor McCain now sadly solicits.

Gone are the compelling moral calls for religious tolerance, gone with the wind, in McCain's new solicitations and maneuverings for support of those he once called intolerant.

In 2000, McCain spoke of integrity, honor and reform in politics.

Who doth ambition shun.

By 2006, McCain political action committee is donating huge sums of money to finance the upcoming smear and slander campaign that the Republican Committees are launching against Democrats.

Honor and integrity have yielded to dirt and smear. The words remain the same, but the McCain money finances the mud, and the McCain courage in fighting for honor in politics is gone with the wind

Who doth ambition shun.

Now, shamefully, sadly, pathetically, it is torture.

The Straight Talk Express has fallen off the tracks. The Straight Torture Express is leaving the station. Even my eightysomething mother commented, after watching McCain on television on Sunday, that McCain's body language sugggested a man uncomfortable with himself.

I didn't watch it.

I couldn't bear to.

This is too much the outrage, and much too sad.

Who doth ambition shun.

The advocate of religious tolerance, paying homage and virtually grovelling to the same forces he once called intolerant.

The advocate of integrity, honor, reform, using his dough to pay for dirt, smear and slander in campaign commercials financed by money raised for his Straight Talk Express.

And now it's torture. Yet another maneuver for a cause that is lesser than himself, the triangulations around torture, in the pursuit of ambition, with the surrender of principle, leaving the odious stench of opportunism in service to acts the rest of the world will consider violations of Geneva.

The Straight Talk Express is gone.

The Straight Torture Express has arrived.

It is the moral cost of ambition.

Someday, somewhere, in some town in New Hampshire, John McCain will speak of honor and integrity, and look into audience for those young men and women full of hope and admiration who were there for him, in New Hampshire, in 2000.

And they will be gone, replaced by some hustling Republican consultant, writing his talking points on torture.

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The Bush Administration Interpretation

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The Real Plan

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Interrogation Compromise

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Spreading Islam By The Sword

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The Mind Of Ahmadinejad

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A History of Fear

Huffington Post
Paul Krassner
A History of Fear

Michael Shea, dismayed over the Bush, er um, victory in the 2004 election, made sure to shave off his grundgy-looking beard and get a haircut before he, with a documentary camera crew, traveled to 22 red states, the better to understand why so many inhabitants re-voted him into the presidency.

Sam Seder, co-host of The Majority Report on Air America calls the resulting documentary, Red State, "Eye opening and scary for those who think America could never become a theocracy."

Shea told me that, "While I began the trip feeling that the Bush administration was craven, cynical and dangerous, I didn't believe that their average supporter fully shared their views. But I learned that there really are many people in this country who don't believe in the Constitution and want to see it replaced by their version of the Bible. And they are very organized. What surprised me the most is that I could really get along with these red staters as people."

It was a challenge, though. Take, for example, the following snippet from his dialogue with Gladys Gill in Jackson, Mississippi:

"I think we lost more than we gained with civil rights," she says. "I hope to see them repealed....I don't know where you folks were when we were trying to hang on to states' rights."

"I was two, I think. In fact, I was born in the year the Civil Rights Act was passed."

"Yeah, right. So you don't remember what life was like when we had liberty to do what we needed to do in our own lives."

Ms. Gill is the state director of Concerned Women for America.

Michael Shea told me, "My aim is to introduce the thoughts and feelings of average radical Republicans to people who may not have been exposed to these ideas before."

See www.redstatethemovie.com for further information.

His statement in the closing scene sums up how he was changed in the process of shooting it:

"I was very moved by the experience of interacting with all of these people. Their concern for their community and the naton was at times quite humbling. But I'm also heading home experiencing a more funadamental feeling--fear. I'm afraid. I've become certain that there are many people in this country who want to tell the rest of us how to live. Who want this country to be governed exclusively by Christians who think that the 10 Commandents and the Bill of Rights are one and the same.

"That truly worries me. One of the founding principles of this nation was relgious freedom, but it seems to me that these people are engaged in a sort of religious tyranny. So, the truth is that I've had a far more complicated experience on this trip than I woud have ever imagined. I feel that these people are worthy of respect, and yet I feel that if they get their way America will cease to be America."

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Bill Clinton Takes On Fox News

ThinkProgress.org
Clinton Takes On Fox News

Today, President Bill Clinton taped an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, which is scheduled to be aired Sunday. He was told the interview would focus on his nonpartisan efforts to raise over $7 billion to combat the world’s biggest problems.

Early in the interview, Wallace attempted to smear Clinton with the same kind of misinformation contained in ABC’s Path to 9/11. Clinton was having none of it.

ThinkProgress has obtained a transcript of the interview. Here are some highlights –

Wallace repeats Path to 9/11 misinformation, Clinton fights back:

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.

CLINTON: OK..

WALLACE: …may I just finish the question sir. And after the attack, the book says, Bin Laden separated his leaders because he expected an attack and there was no response. I understand that hindsight is 20/20.

CLINTON: No let’s talk about…

WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.

Clinton takes on Fox News bias:

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right…

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t…I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke… So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..

WALLACE: Now wait a minute sir…

CLINTON:…

WALLACE: I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked: Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole? I want to know how many you asked: Why did you fire Dick Clarke? I want to know…

WALLACE: We asked…

CLINTON:…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you ask them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that did you? Tell the truth.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth.

WALLACE: I…with Iraq and Afghanistan there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about…

WALLACE: [laughs]

CLINTON: You said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion dollars plus over three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.

Clinton on his priorities and the Bush administration priorities:

CLINTON: What did I do? I worked hard to try and kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him. Now I never criticized President Bush and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is 1/7 as important as Iraq. And you ask me about terror and Al Qaeda with that sort of dismissive theme when all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way to try to protect the country against terror. And you’ve got that little smirk on your face. It looks like you’re so clever…

WALLACE: [Laughs]

CLINTON: I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get Bin Laden. I regret it but I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. The entire military was against sending special forces into Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter and no one thought we could do it otherwise…We could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaeda was responsible while I was President. Until I left office. And yet I get asked about this all the time and they had three times as much time to get him as I did and no one ever asks them about this. I think that’s strange.

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Feds drop count in Hamas terrorism trial

Yahoo! News
Feds drop count in Hamas terrorism trial
By MIKE ROBINSON, Associated Press Writer

Federal prosecutors Friday dropped a charge that an alleged fundraiser for the Palestinian militant group Hamas gave material support to terrorists — a move that stunned defense attorneys.

Prosecutors gave no explanation in court and declined to comment afterward.

Muhammad Salah, 53, who has been the focus of a high-profile terrorism investigation for nine years, remains charged with racketeering conspiracy and lying by denying membership in Hamas.

The dropped charge carries a 10-year maximum sentence; conspiracy carries a maximum of life, and obstruction by lying 10 years.

But the dropping of the charge was a victory for Salah, whose 2004 indictment was announced at the Justice Department by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"This is astounding," Salah's attorney Michael E. Deutsch said.

The surprise came at a hearing after Deutsch asked U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve to press prosecutors to turn over background material on a prospective government witness, Jack Mustafa.

Deutsch asked for information about how much the FBI had paid Mustafa and whether he had an arrest record. It was then that prosecutor Joseph M. Ferguson said quietly that the government wanted to drop the charge with prejudice, meaning it cannot be reinstated.

Prosecutors also said they were withdrawing Mustafa as a witness.

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U.S. Democrats wary of detainee trials compromise

Reuters
U.S. Democrats wary of detainee trials compromise
By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional Democrats were skeptical on Friday of a deal negotiated by three hold-out Republican senators to rein in President George W. Bush's program to interrogate and try terrorism suspects.

As Bush's fellow Republicans prepared to move the agreement through Congress next week, lawmakers checked the fine print of a compromise bill that would allow aggressive CIA interrogations of foreign suspects but require that they comply with Geneva Conventions, which ensures humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the deal "a substantial improvement" over Bush's plan, but said it still had "a number of problems."

But Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, derided it for using "legal mumbo jumbo to obscure the fact that the CIA will continue to be allowed to use torture and will actually be insulated from legal liability for previous acts of torture."

Many Democrats were formulating their positions on the bill.

Bush went to Congress after the Supreme Court in June ruled that his plan for trying foreign suspects did not meet judicial standards. He has repeatedly denied charges by international critics that interrogations of suspects amount to torture.

Bush and the Senate Republicans who challenged his proposal -- John McCain of Arizona, John Warner of Virginia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- cinched a deal on Thursday that allows aggressive CIA interrogations and would more narrowly define what is punishable as a war crime under U.S. law.

But Bush agreed to drop an effort to redefine U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

The agreement gives defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them, although it could be in redacted or summary form. It sets stricter limits than Bush wanted on evidence obtained by coercion, requiring a judge to decide if it is reliable and in the interest of justice.

MIXED REVIEWS FROM HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES

Congress is expected to consider the legislation next week to set up trials for suspects at the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S intelligence chief John Negroponte, at a conference in Oxford, England, told Reuters and the International Herald Tribune that "work is already being done amongst our prosecutors to prepare the cases for trial," but declined to give a timetable for their start.

Human rights groups disagreed on whether the bill would significantly change CIA's interrogations, which have been condemned for violating international standards.

Christopher Anders, of the American Civil Liberties Union, called it "a significant step back," although much better than Bush's proposal.

But Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First said the agreement that would criminalize "serious" acts of cruelty and would bar "waterboarding" that simulates drowning, and should bar other harsh methods such as induced hypothermia.

With the deal, Bush would outline interrogation techniques that must comply with the Geneva Conventions, and the Senate and House Intelligence committees would review those.

Levin complained that while the deal limits use of testimony obtained by coercion, "it inexplicably" allows such statements obtained before December 30, 2005.

A number of Democrats also object that the deal strips detainees' habeas corpus rights to challenge their detentions.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said excluding habeas corpus rights was unconstitutional and set a hearing on the issue for Monday.

(Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan in Oxford, England)

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U.S. conservatives frustrated by Republicans

Reuters
U.S. conservatives frustrated by Republicans
By John Whitesides and Ed Stoddard

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Religious conservatives voiced frustration on Friday with Republican Party leaders and their failure to push key social initiatives through the U.S. Congress and said it could hurt voter turnout in November's elections.

At a "Values Voters Summit" sponsored by leading religious conservative groups, some activists said President George W. Bush and Republican leaders showed too much pragmatism and too little concern for issues like abortion, immigration and banning gay marriage.

"There is no question people are frustrated with the Republican Party. The message it sends is: 'We don't care where you stand, we just want you to be a Republican,'" said Phil Burress, president of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values.

Burress was a leader in the state's 2004 fight for a ballot initiative banning gay marriage, credited with helping turn out conservative support for Bush. He said he was not sure religious conservatives would turn out with the same vigor in 2006.

"There is a big number who may not show up to vote," he said.

Social and religious conservatives are a crucial Republican voting bloc as the party battles to keep control of Congress in November's elections. Bolstering their turnout has been a top concern for the White House.

"In the next weeks before the election they are going to realize that if they want to mobilize the conservative social values base they are going to have to keep our issues on the agenda and not just pay lip service," said Chris Slattery, an anti-abortion activist from New York.

"There is some sense the people's priorities haven't necessarily been Washington's priorities. There is frustration," said Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, one of a handful of potential 2008 Republican White House candidates who addressed the gathering.

Also speaking at the conference were Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Virginia Sen. George Allen.

Speaking on Saturday will be Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Allen and Santorum face tough re-election fights in November.

"People who are tired of K Street corruption and Wall Street greed are ready for some old-fashioned Main Street values," Huckabee said in a reference to the corridors of political and financial power in Washington and New York.

Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said Republican congressional leaders had rallied spirits with a summer agenda that featured issues like immigration, stem cell research and parental notification laws on abortion.

"It's brought back some trust and confidence in the leadership," Perkins said, although he acknowledged, "I don't think the enthusiasm is at the level it was in 2004."

Mentions of Bush and his leadership drew cheers from the crowd, but several attendees said the president could have done more for their movement.

"It would have been nice to see that bully pulpit used more ... on same-sex marriage and issues of life," said Thomas McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council.

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A $1 billion reading program that is a key part of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind education law was mismanaged and rife with conflicts

Reuters
Bush reading program blasted in internal audit
By Joanne Morrison

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A $1 billion reading program that is a key part of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind education law was mismanaged and rife with conflicts of interest, according to an internal audit released on Friday.

The audit by the inspector general's office of the Reading First program -- the largest early reading program in U.S. history -- found that officials in 2002 and 2003, shortly after the program was established, improperly tried to influence states on which curricula they should use.

In addition, some officials with the power to approve certain reading materials for states had connections with the publishers, according to the report. It said the department had not properly reviewed the officials for such potential conflicts.

"The department did not identify any of these connections in its conflict of interest screening process; therefore, it would not have been in a position to deal with the potential conflict raised by these connections," the report said.

The director of this reading program at the Education Department will leave his post this month to return to the private sector, a department spokeswoman said.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has taken to improve the department's screening process and management, the spokeswoman told Reuters. It has also taken the steps recommended by the inspector general to avoid conflicts of interest.

"Some of the actions taken by Department officials and described in the Inspector General's report reflect individual mistakes," Spellings said in a statement.

"Although these events occurred before I became Secretary of Education, I am concerned about these actions and committed to addressing and resolving them," she added, vowing to put all the inspector general's recommendations in place.

The department acknowledged there had been issues with management and conflicts of interest, but said the program had been successful in improving reading skills among younger students.

Reading First has served more than 1.7 million students in kindergarten through third grade.

State educational agencies have received over $4.8 billion in Reading First grants, helping about 5,600 schools.

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Ehrlich Wants Paper Ballots For Nov. Vote

Ehrlich Wants Paper Ballots For Nov. Vote
State Election Chief Says Staff Toiling to Fix Electronic Glitches
By Christian Davenport and Ann E. Marimow
Washington Post Staff Writers

A week after the primary election was plagued by human error and technical glitches, Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called yesterday for the state to scrap its $106 million electronic voting apparatus and revert to a paper ballot system for the November election.

"When in doubt, go paper, go low-tech," he said.

Linda H. Lamone, the administrator of the Maryland State Board of Elections, quickly denounced the plan to swap voting systems just seven weeks before the general election as "crazy." And Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said it "cannot happen. It will not happen."

Ehrlich said that, if necessary, he would call a special session of the Maryland General Assembly to change the law to allow paper ballots. But Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) dismissed the idea of a special session, saying elections officials should focus instead on fixing the current system.

"We paid millions. These are state-of-the-art machines," said Miller, who called Ehrlich's announcement a political ploy to energize his Republican supporters.

In Montgomery and Prince George's counties yesterday, election officials continued to count the thousands of paper provisional ballots that could determine the outcome of the 4th Congressional District Democratic primary race between incumbent U.S. Rep. Albert R. Wynn and challenger Donna Edwards. Prince George's officials cracked opened 26 machines yesterday and retrieved votes that had not been counted.

The problems playing out in Maryland have created unease elsewhere in the nation, where more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines in the Nov. 7 election and a third of all precincts are using them for the first time.

Ehrlich's statement came after a State Board of Public Works hearing at which Lamone said her staff would "work around the clock" to correct the problems that plagued the primary. She vowed that her office would help local election boards retrain judges, recruit new ones and force Diebold Election Systems to fix the problems that caused some of its machines to malfunction.

The idea of switching systems now worried local election officials who said testing new equipment and educating election judges and voters about a new system would be a daunting -- if not impossible -- task.

"There isn't a lot of time," said Marjorie Roher, a spokeswoman for the Montgomery Board of Elections.

Henry Fawell, a spokesman for Ehrlich, said the governor's top priority is to replace the electronic poll books, used to check in voters. But he said Ehrlich "is also interested in moving voters to a paper ballot for this year's general election."

"He realizes it's a tall order," Fawell said. But moving to paper ballots would "eliminate the chronic problems that electronic voting machines demonstrated [Sept. 12] with respect to crashing and susceptibility to tampering."

In the spring, Ehrlich advocated leasing optical scan machines that use paper ballots, a proposal that won unanimous support in the House of Delegates but was rejected by the Senate.

Many of the problems that marred this month's primary resulted from human error. Election judges in Baltimore failed to show up, meaning the polls opened late. In Montgomery, voting at nearly all 238 precincts was delayed because officials forgot to distribute plastic cards needed to operate voting machines.

In Prince George's, election officials struggled to transmit data electronically from polling places to a central office on election night, delaying the counting process for hours. In the days since, they have also discovered that dozens of memory cards were not counted after the election; some remained locked in voting machines for days.

Yesterday, county election officials began opening selected machines to locate the missing cards and capture the voting information contained on them.

Also yesterday, Gene Raynor, the Baltimore election director, resigned, saying Lamone and the General Assembly "have set dangerous precedents that, in my opinion, threaten the integrity of November's elections." Raynor previously sat on the State Board of Elections, where he had joined members in trying to oust Lamone two years ago.

There were also technical problems during the primary, mainly with the electronic poll books that were used in the state for the first time. They replaced the paper printouts of the voter registration rolls, allowing election judges to check in voters electronically.

Some crashed and needed to be rebooted, election judges reported. Others failed to transmit the name of a checked-in voter to the other machines in the same polling place. That meant, theoretically, that a voter could cast more than one ballot. Officials said they had no evidence of any voter fraud.

Lamone said the electronic poll books, purchased from Diebold in June and July, were tested in the days before the election. But those tests did not reveal any problems.

Mark Radke, a Diebold spokesman, said many of the poll books crashed because software created exclusively for Maryland caused the machines' memories to fill up after about 40 people had checked in to vote.

He said the company was investigating the synchronization problems.

But Ehrlich said he wasn't willing to risk the possibility that such glitches would remain for the November election, in which he is seeking a second term.

"I'm not sure we can afford another experiment," Ehrlich said after the Board of Public Works hearing. "I want to play it safe."

His position was supported in the hearing by Avi Rubin, a Johns Hopkins University computer scientist who worked as an elections judge during the primary and has long been critical of the touch-screen voting machines.

Gilles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said his panel has requested that Diebold officials appear at its meeting Tuesday.

"Their feet are going to be held to the fire," Burger said.

Maryland's election law leaves it to the State Elections Board to pick a voting system and certify its reliability and security. Mark Davis, the assistant attorney general who represents the board, said it has already performed required tests on the touch-screen machines.

"The board feels it would be catastrophic to try to do that for another system between now and the general election," he said. "It just doesn't make any sense."

Staff writer Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.

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White House Names Names in Abramoff Scandal

ABC News
White House Names Names in Abramoff Scandal
The Associated Press

— - The Bush administration on Wednesday released records showing White House appointments landed by several figures in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Among them:

--Conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who was cleared for 97 visits to the White House complex between 2001 and 2006, including a half-dozen events with the president.

-- Republican activist Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, who had 18 appointments, including two events with Bush.

-- Former Abramoff lobbying associate Neil Volz, a former aide to Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney, with 18 appointments. Volz has pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt Ney and others with trips and other largess.

-- Former Abramoff lobbying colleague Shawn Vasell, who also had 18. Two were Bush events, likely a February bill signing and a Ford's Theatre gala, that occurred this year, when Vasell was no longer working with Abramoff.

--Abramoff business partner Michael Scanlon, a former aide to then-Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, who may have had one appointment. The White House couldn't say for certain whether the name in the Secret Service log was the same person. Scanlon has pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe public officials while lobbying on behalf of Indian tribes.

--Tony Rudy, a former DeLay aide and Abramoff lobbying team member, had 13, none with Bush. Rudy has pleaded guilty to conspiring with Abramoff.

-- Former Abramoff lobbying associate Kevin Ring, a former aide to California Republican Rep. John Doolittle, who had 21, none with Bush.

--Two former Abramoff lobbying colleagues who joined Bush's administration, David Safavian and Patrick Pizzella, show up in the appointment logs often. Pizzella, an assistant secretary of labor, had 48, none with Bush. Among the many meetings for Safavian, a former Bush administration procurement official who pleaded guilty to trying to hide his dealings with Abramoff, just one was with Bush, a 2004 event that likely was an employee holiday reception.

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Conservative websites claim Rove has been promising GOP insiders an 'October surprise'

Conservative websites claim Rove has been promising GOP insiders an 'October surprise'
RAW STORY
Published: Thursday September 21, 2006

According to two conservative websites, White House political strategist Karl Rove has been promising GOP insiders that there will be an "October surprise" before the midterm elections.

"In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an 'October surprise' to help win the November congressional elections," reports Ronald Kessler for Newsmax.

"President Bush's political strategist is also saying that the final two weeks before the elections will see a blitz of advertising, and the Republican National Committee is deploying an army of volunteers to key locations to help the grass-roots effort and monitor the election," the article continues. "The RNC is offering to fly in volunteers and cover their expenses."

A few weeks ago, another conservative publication, The American Spectator, reported that White House staffers had "been talking up the possibilities of an 'October Surprise' or two leading into the mid-term elections."

"They say the President feels confident he can still play a role in the election, that he intends to campaign hard for Republicans, and that on the policy front, there are a couple of issues that can be used as wedges along the way," according to a column written by "The Prowler."

Excerpts from Newsmax article:
#

Rove is not saying what the October surprise will be. Asked if he would elaborate and give his thinking about the coming elections, Rove told NewsMax that his take largely parallels what RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said in a Sept. 5 NewsMax story.

As for the October Surprise, Rove said, "I'd rather let the balance [of plans for the elections] unroll on its own."
#

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U.N. expert: Iraq torture may be worse

Yahoo! News
U.N. expert: Iraq torture may be worse
By ELIANE ENGELER, Associated Press Writer

Torture in Iraq may be worse now than it was under Saddam Hussein, with militias, terrorist groups and government forces disregarding rules on the humane treatment of prisoners, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Thursday.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, made the remarks as he was presenting a report on detainee conditions at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay as well as to brief the U.N. Human Rights Council, the global body's top rights watchdog, on torture worldwide.

Reports from Iraq indicate that torture "is totally out of hand," he said. "The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein."

Nowak added, "That means something, because the torture methods applied under Saddam Hussein were the worst you could imagine."

Some allegations of torture were undoubtedly credible, with government forces among the perpetrators, he said, citing "very serious allegations of torture within the official Iraqi detention centers."

"You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed," Nowak told reporters at the U.N.'s European headquarters.

"It's not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you'll find by private militias," he said.

A report by the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office cited worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women.

Iraq's government, set up in 2006, is "currently facing a generalized breakdown of law and order which presents a serious challenge to the institutions of Iraq" such as police and security forces and the legal system, the U.N. report said, noting that torture was a major concern.

Nowak has yet to make an official visit to Iraq and said such a mission would be unfeasible as long as the security situation there remains perilous. He based his comments on interviews with people during a visit to Amman, Jordan, and other sources.

"You find these bodies with very heavy and very serious torture marks," he said. "Many of these allegations, I have no doubt that they are credible."

According to the U.N. report, the number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record-high that is far greater than initial estimates suggested, the U.N. report said Wednesday.

It attributed many of the deaths to rising sectarian tensions that have pushed Iraq toward civil war.

___

Associated Press writers Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva and Nick Wadhams at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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Commerce Department loses 1,137 laptops

Yahoo! News
Commerce Department loses 1,137 laptops
By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer

The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 laptop computers since 2001, most of them assigned to the Census Bureau, officials said Thursday night. No personal information has been known to have been improperly used.

The number of people affected could not be determined, officials said, in what was the latest in a series of data losses at government agencies that have raised concerns about identity theft.

"All of the equipment that was lost or stolen contained protections to prevent a breach of personal information," Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said in a statement. "The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low."

The review was prompted by a request for information by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform. In addition, a media inquiry — the department would not identify the source — came via a Freedom of Information Act filing, Commerce spokesman Richard Mills said in an interview.

The Census Bureau, the main collector of information about Americans, lost 672 computers, the Commerce Department said in a statement. Of those, 246 contained some personal data.

More than 30,000 laptops were used within the department's 15 operating unit since 2001, the department said, and a total of 1,137 were stolen or missing.

Census data collected during survey periods were downloaded each day and removed from the laptops at the end of the survey periods, making impossible an estimate of how much personal information may have been on the computers, Mills said.

Fifteen handheld devices used to record survey data for testing processes in preparation for the 2010 Census also were lost, the department said. The department was in the process of contacting the 558 households with data recorded on the missing devices, although because of encryption technology, the risk of data misuse was considered low, it said.

A half-dozen other federal agencies or departments have reported data thefts and security breaches involving personal information in the last six months.

The Veterans Affairs Department suffered the biggest loss with the theft in May of a laptop and external drive containing information for 26.5 million veterans and active-duty troops. Burglars stole the equipment from the home of a Veterans Affairs employee, but the computer was later recovered and showed no signs of having been accessed for the personal data.

Other government departments reporting the loss of computers with personal information include the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services and Transportation. The Federal Trade Commission also has lost laptops with sensitive data.

Census Bureau data collectors ask Americans the most personal questions about their lives, from how much money they earn and the value of their homes to their ages and their number of children. That information is used by governments, academic researchers and businesses, among others, to discover what Americans are doing in their lives. Privacy and confidentiality are guaranteed by law.

Thousands of Census field representatives — many of them temporary, hourly employees — use laptop computers to compile survey data. The department said half the laptops containing personal information were stolen, often from employees' vehicles, and 113 were not returned.

Second only to the Census Bureau in missing laptops at the Commerce Department was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It reported 325 missing computers, three of them containing personal data.

Among those stolen was one used by a NOAA law enforcement agent and containing some case file information. In July, a laptop containing Social Security numbers and other information on 146 employees and contractors was reported stolen after a fire in a NOAA facility in Seattle, the department said.

Gutierrez said the department was taking steps to protect against further missing laptops or potential breaches of personal identity data. Among them were inventory reforms, including creating a database for all departmental property, and "raising employee accountability standards."

"This review process has clearly pointed out the flaws in the department's inventory and accountability efforts going back many years," Gutierrez said. "We are viewing this process with the spirit of actively rooting out the problems and addressing them immediately."

___

On the Net:

Commerce Department: http://www.commerce.gov

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Black Republicans run racially tinged ad

Yahoo! News
Black Republicans run racially tinged ad
By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press Writer

A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim challenged by civil-rights researchers.

Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the black Republican nominee for Maryland's open Senate seat, disavowed the ad Thursday as "insulting to Marylanders". He said his campaign asked the Washington-based National Black Republican Association to stop running it.

At an event in Baltimore, Steele said, "I don't know exactly what the intent of the ad was" but that "it's not helpful to the public discourse."

The ad does not mention Steele or his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin.

The association's president, Frances Rice, did not return calls for comment. The group, founded a year ago, promotes the GOP to black voters.

It was not immediately clear which radio stations were airing the 60-second ad or how long it had been running. The group's Web site announced the ad's release in a statement dated two weeks ago. The Washington Post reported Thursday that the ad was running on Baltimore stations.

The spot begins with one woman telling another, "Dr. King was a real man. You know he was a Republican."

Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said Thursday that King never endorsed candidates from either party.

"I think it's highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there's really no evidence," Klein said.

A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan.

In the ad, the woman goes on to say, "Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan." Her companion replies, "The Klan? White hoods and sheets?"

The KKK, never a political party, was a racist group of white men that started in the South after the Civil War, when Republicans were almost unheard of in former Confederate states. The mainstream Democratic Party never endorsed the Klan nor claimed to have founded it.

The first woman also says, "Democrats fought all civil rights legislation from the 1860s to the 1960s. Democrats released those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks."

The ad asserts that "Democrats want to keep us poor while voting only Democrat" and, "Democrats want us to accept same-sex marriages, teen abortions without a parent's consent and suing the Boy Scouts for saying 'God' in their pledge."

About the GOP, the ad says: "Republicans freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the Constitution."

The group running the ads describes itself on its Web site as "a resource for the black community on Republican ideals." It does not say how many members it has.

Race is a prominent theme in the Maryland race for the seat held by retiring Democrat Paul Sarbanes. Steele, the first black candidate elected statewide in Maryland, faces a white Democrat in a heavily Democratic state with the highest percentage of black residents — 29 percent — of any state outside the South.

___

Associated Press Writer Ben Greene contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

National Black Republican Association: http://www.nbra.info

Hear the ad: http://www.trustedpartner.com/docs/library/000143/NBRA%20Radio%20Ad.mp3

Steele campaign: http://www.steeleformaryland.com

Cardin campaign: http://www.bencardin.com

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Venezuela's Chavez continues anti-Bush harangue

Reuters
Venezuela's Chavez continues anti-Bush harangue
By Daniel Trotta

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After branding President Bush as the devil at the United Nations, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his anti-imperialist rhetoric to Harlem on Thursday and ridiculed the Texan as a puffed-up John Wayne wannabe.

And the crowds -- a carefully selected group of leftists and liberals -- loved it.

Chavez stunned delegates at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday by calling Bush "the devil himself" and saying he left the smell of sulfur hanging in the chamber from his appearance the previous day.

He received an ovation at the United Nations, but nothing like the raucous and upbeat receptions later Wednesday at a free university and again on Thursday at a Baptist church in the predominantly black neighborhood of Harlem.

Friendly leftist crowds soaked up his critique of the Iraq war, his interpretation of the history of U.S. military interventions and his stories about visiting Cuban President Fidel Castro, who is recovering from surgery.

They chanted pro-Chavez slogans and applauded his oil diplomacy. Chavez extended his policy of giving away heating oil or selling it at a discount to poor Americans, this time benefiting a Native American group.

"Every day I ask God, and the sooner the better, for the American people to elect a president who you can talk with, who you can work with, who you can talk with face-to-face as a brother and see each other as equals," Chavez told the Harlem Church on Thursday.

"Not this gentleman who walks like John Wayne," Chavez said, puffing out his chest and swinging his elbows back and forth. The crowd went wild, but the carefully chosen audiences reflected public opinion outside the American mainstream.

U.S. officials said Chavez's remarks did not dignify a response. Even Nancy Pelosi, a liberal member of Congress and one of Bush's fiercest political opponents, called Chavez a "thug" for likening Bush to the devil.

"Hugo Chavez fancies himself a modern day Simon Bolivar but all he is an everyday thug," the House Democratic leader said at a news conference.

Simon Bolivar led the fight for independence against Spanish rule in several South American countries in the early 19th century and is a political role model for Chavez.

In his New York appearance, Chavez invoked Bolivar and his other favorite leaders and thinkers as he lectured Americans on their own history and race relations, such as slavery and the conquest of Native Americans.

The dark-skinned, mixed race leader told New Yorkers to read Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain as well as modern thinkers like Noam Chomsky and John Kenneth Galbraith, lamenting he could not meet Galbraith before he died in April at age 97.

"It's not easy talking to Americas about these topics, but it is the truth," Chavez said. "You need to understand the truth."

On Wednesday, Chavez began his speech by displaying a copy of American writer Chomsky's 2004 book "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance," and recommending it to U.N. delegates and U.S. citizens.

By Thursday, the book had risen from backlist obscurity to the No. 3 bestseller at online bookseller Amazon.com.

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